14 September 2011 10:17 PM

Basildon twinned with...Zimbabwe?

To thoughtful observers, the UN long has given cause for the gravest possible concern that it is making a mockery of the high ideals on which it was founded after the Second World War -- ideals of justice, freedom and international law. In recent years, it has stood those ideals on their heads by systematically disregarding or minimising human rights abuses by some of the most hellish regimes on earth, simply because these regimes came to dominate the UN’s proceedings.

Despite the fact that the UN now dances to the tune of the very human rights violators that it was founded to curb, it is still regarded as the global arbiter of justice. To the left in particular, it has remained sacrosanct as the foundation-stone of utopia, the forge of the brotherhood of man and the architect of peace on earth. Those of us who have been endeavouring for years to show that, on the contrary, the UN promotes injustice and illegality, violence and chaos have faced a challenge that would have discouraged Sisyphus.

Now, however, it seems that we have our poster-boy to advertise the grotesque charade that the UN has become. Step forward Professor Yves Cabannes, the UN’s Adviser for Forced Evictions.

You might think that Prof Cabannes would have his work cut out running round the world from tyranny to tyranny investigating the plight of people forced from their homes in an arbitrary and illegal manner through ethnic cleansing, for example, wars or religious persecution. The Third World is chock-full full of refugees. In Zimbabwe, for example, as a result of the mass forced evictions programme carried out in June and July 2005 in which more than 700,000 people lost their homes or their livelihoods, thousands of people are even now living in inadequate conditions.

So where would you expect to find Prof Cabannes raising the UN standard in defence of those evicted from their homes by the monstrous tyrannies of this earth? Africa? Azerbaijan? China?Egypt?Turkey?

No. Basildon.

Basildon?

Yup, it turns out that Basildon council in Essex should be considered a flagrant human rights abuser, on a par with the most evil regimes in the world. So what did Basildon do to deserve this damning designation? It had the brazen gall to uphold English law and enforce it against those who were breaking it.

Yes, you read that right. Indeed, in the eyes of Prof Cabannes Basildon should be effectively twinned with Zimbabwe for evicting some 400 travellers who had been illegally occupying plots on Dale Farm, Essex.

You see, according to the UN’s Forced Evictions Adviser it was not the travellers who had acted illegally but Basildon council which had broken international law in no fewer than three different ways -- and which therefore deserved to be in the dock alongside not just Zimbabwe but Nigeria and China.

Rub your eyes – Basildon council was upholding the law of the land. But in the Orwellian universe of the UN, it had acted illegally because had failed to provide the pitches it should make available to travellers.

There is no indication whatever that in any other than the upside-down universe of the UN’s Forced Evictions Adviser Basildon council has acted in anything other than a proper manner in evicting these travellers, thereby upholding the law.

But to the UN Forced Evictions Adviser, it seems the law of a democracy now counts for nothing. What counts instead is his interpretation of a Higher Law, sanctified by the UN, which turns justice and democracy on their heads.

Moreover, by equating evictions carried out in accordance with the rule of law on the one hand with the illegal eviction of innocent people by tyrannical regimes on the other, the UN’s Forced Evictions Adviser is effectively denying the difference between the rule of law and its negation.

He is also inescapably trivialising and minimising the atrocities committed in Zimbabwe, China and other tyrannies, and the terrible suffering of those forced out of their homes for no reason other than the repressive nature of the regimes under which they are unfortunate enough to live.

For most people in Britain, the UN does not figure very high in their consciousness. The baleful part it is playing on the world’s stage in ignoring or condoning repression and worse, and the catastrophic consequences of this for global peace and freedom, are thus all but ignored. With the planting of the UN standard, however, in a Basildon flower-bed and his surreal press conference equating the enforcement of English law with ethnic cleansing and other atrocities, the preposterous Professor Cabannes may have finally alerted Britain to the moral degeneracy of the world’s policeman.

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"For most people in Britain, the UN does not figure very high in their consciousness." Just like the Palestinian Authority - the British taxpayer is paying for both these totally corrupt institutions. Perhaps it would be better if "most people in Britain" would become conscious, despite all their media and politicians' efforts, of where a substantial chunk of their hard-earned money is going.

As you can see, Melanie, people are always ready to run in for helping and support the worst. Even on paper they don't belong to in any way. Peter Barker's comment is a flagrant example.
Eradication of U.N. wouldn't be enough, in this kind of world.

Peter Barker.
Codswallop. Contradictory codswallop. Of course the land belongs to the travellers who live there. But they should not be living there. Because they have not been given planning permission to live there. If they applied and the local authority gave planning permission, then it would be perfectly ok for a football stadium to be built there. The key phrase is 'planning permission'. The fact that this has become a 'travellers' issue is entirely down to the travellers themselves. They knew full well what they were doing and the outcry it would cause. They are not an ethnic group, so talk of ethnic cleansing is pure nonsense and your contention that Prof Cabannes is right to be troubled is laughable. He should be escorted to the airport and put on a fast aircraft heading west.

What concerns outsiders I think is the anti-traveller hysteria whipped up by the press. Your own paper's leader comment today for example completely misses the point by implying that the problem is not the fact that building has taken place without planning permission, but that it has been done by travellers. It seems that Prof Cabannes has made the same mistake, but given the way this story has been covered it is not surprising. A planning enforcement matter has been conflated with wider issues about travellers. At Dale Farm, the facts are that the owners of the land have permission to develop half of it for residential use, but not the other half, and the planning authority has quite properly taken enforcement action to reverse the unauthorised part of the development. Although the Dale Farm planning breach is on a bigger scale, it is no different in principle from a home owner building an extension without planning permission and being ordered to demolish it. The Council has been very careful to express itself in this way. Unfortunately, the press has not been so responsible - so we have emotive and misleading talk of "eviction", which is nonsense. The impression gained from the coverage is that the Council has taken the action because the people who own the site are travellers, and a good job too. My local paper recently ran a leader comment in which the editor said he had no problem with travellers, as long as they do not trespass on land they don't own, do not build on land they do own, and as long as local authorities do not provide rented pitches for them either. That pretty much covers all the bases. My MP suggested that a small site in this constituency that has been developed by travellers should be cleared and the land used to provide a ground forn the local football team: well there are two problems there, aren't there? One, the local football team does not own the land, it belongs to the travellers who live there and it is none of the MP's business; and two, from a planning point of view a football stadium would bring more problems than a residential caravan site. This is the mood that has taken hold, and Prof Cabannes is right to be troubled by that.

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